


Out of Time

by Anxiety_Pickle



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Feels, Gen, Hotel Oblivion, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, Number Five | The Boy Gets A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Post-Season/Series 02, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Season 3 Speculation, Someone please let Five have his dog, but in a feral way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anxiety_Pickle/pseuds/Anxiety_Pickle
Summary: Five had known there was something wrong the second they stepped into the mansion, because nothing ever went right for them.Now, in the wake of their father's reveal, the Hargreeves are stranded in a timeline they don't belong. Five needs to get his family home, but this time around, it might be even harder than he thinks.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy), The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65





	Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently obsessed with one (1) gremlin man and my hyperfixation will not let me rest. Anyways! Here have some speculation

Five had known there was something wrong the second they stepped into the mansion, because nothing ever went right for them. 

He doesn’t have a fight in him after what he pulled in the barn; his power snaps volatilely back at him, the fabric of space-time scratching irrately at the edge of his consciousness, bubbling with a sort of incomprehensible fury. The sensation burrows under his fingernails, squirms into his stomach, coils around his lungs. Hot blood climbs up his throat.

Klaus stares wide eyed up at Ben’s doppelganger. “Ben?” 

The ghost of their brother stares down at them. His vision swims, and his face blurs, but the signs of aggravation are obvious in his mannerisms. He looks different. He looks angry. 

A different fucking timeline. How had they changed so much?

“That’s not-” He slurs. 

“Who the hell are you?” Diego snaps, bone-white knuckles in a stranglehold around his knife. Their replacements, the Sparrow Academy, glare down at them. His mind swims - what went wrong? The conversation in 1963, of course, he’s so fucking stupid. They changed something - altered the timeline - but, no, that didn’t make sense either-

“These are your predecessors, children. They’re but a failed prototype; I based your upbringing off of their mistakes.”

Vanya’s mouth wobbles. Klaus audibly inhales, and Luther takes a step back. The world crashes around their shoulders and it feels so much like the weight of the apocalypse sitting upon his shoulders, air thick with heat and ash, smoke curling in his lungs. 

Words swim in his periphery. 

“-Aberrations and disappointments-” Dad sneers, fucking bastard, and Five stumbles sideways, his first mistake: showing signs of weakness.

“Y’know,” One of the girls says, the one with a crow perched on her shoulder. It tilts its head, blinking shiny black eyes at them. “I didn’t think you meant it when you said that one would be a kid.”

“You must understand, don’t you?”

If there’s one thing that Five knows, it’s violence. He recognizes the intent behind those words instantly. 

“Ben, please-”

Ben sneers in response, so different from the ones he remembers. 

The blood pounds in his ears. They need to get out of here. The tension crackles across the air, the cosmic reminder that they don’t belong lining his lungs with stones. Can’t they see it? 

“Children.” Dad says, straightening out of his lecture on their incompetence, the nature of time travel, as if Five doesn’t defy the laws of nature by existing, as if he doesn’t know. “I trust you to dispose of them.”

Oh, no. 

There’s no way to win a fight here. They have the advantage of numbers, team cohesion, and the ambiguity of their powers. Dad’s already twisted his claws into his sibling’s minds, to show vulnerability is to invite death, children. To lose one’s composure to a tactful word means you’ve already lost. 

“So what,” Five snaps. “Is this where you kill us?”

Reginald Hargreeves looks down the bridge of his nose, shoulders pulled back, spine set straight. “I seek only to eliminate a catastrophe. I thought you, of all people, could understand that.”

Fury ignites up his spine. 

“I’m not going to do it again!” Vanya cries. “I didn’t mean to! I - I have it under control-” 

“Ridiculous girl.” He snaps. “Did you think it would be that simple? That anything so meaningless as intent could sway such a universal constant?”

Vanya steps back, and Five _seethes._

“By existing here as you are, you bring the threat of your destruction behind you. The only solution is for your elimination. Did you think your little vacation in time would be without consequence? You’re a blight upon the fabric of reality.”

Allison grabs Luther’s arm. In the corner of his wavering vision, Ben - Number Two - lifts the edge of his shirt. Five is absolutely certain he doesn’t want to get a closeup of The Horror anytime soon. 

“Piece of _shit-”_ Diego snarls, just before the crow screams. Black feathers explode in the air, and Five knows they have less than seconds to move, to run, to _get out._ The Horror slithers out of its hiding place, a grotesque limb just as horrifying as he remembers it, brushing against the shaking light fixtures. It’s now or never.

He's running on empty. There's no way he can weather a fight in his condition. He doesn't even know if he can handle a jump with so many people, but he doesn't have a choice. His ears ring, his heart hammers in his chest, and something gives. 

He grits his teeth and _pulls._ Sparks crackle in his ears, and his vision whites out. 

Allison yelps as the sidewalk rearranges itself beneath their feet. The jolt cleaves straight up his shins and he stumbles sideways, bracing himself on the briefcase before crumpling to the gritty alleyway pavement like a marionette with its strings cut.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Five?” Vanya calls. A window shatters above, and glass rains down on them. A crow swoops around the corner of a building, turning down with a shriek, ink-blot wings snapping together in a tight kill-spiral. Diego’s knife pierces straight through its chest. 

He trembles there, inhaling through his chattering teeth. A bone-deep chill rattles his bones, banging against his ribs. A deep agony drills into his bones. 

_Fuck._

“Five, you’re _bleeding.”_ Vanya kneels down next to him - he didn’t even notice she was there through the dizzying pain in his skull - and reaches a hand to drag him up. With a shaking hand, heavy as led, he wipes away the stream of blood trickling down his face. 

Something is wrong, something is _wrong._

“Time to fly the coop, folks!” Klaus calls. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my cause of death being eyes-pecked-out-by-crows-”

Luther grabs his hand and pulls them faster before he can finish whatever stupid thing he was going to say. 

His next breath rattles in his chest. The adrenaline draining from his system, his legs give out, and he sees white.

Back at the Commission, the Handler had been fascinated with his powers. Understandably so, of course: the briefcases were, after all, inferior versions of himself. They had the bad tendency to displace space-time, she had admitted in a rare spout of sincerity, during one of their conversations about string theory. The doctors had never been able to figure out the mechanisms behind his seamless travel no matter how hard he tried.

He knows his powers run adjacent to the principles of superposition and geodesics. He likes to think he knows everything about them. 

He’s not sure what’s happening now.

“Taxi!” Allison steps off the curbs, and then hails another one. He blinks sluggishly.

“Five.” Luther drops him carefully to the ground. The world veers sideways in a blur of flashing light and sound. Cars fly down the street, someone honks, the quiet sound of chatter sounds so much like burning, like the fires that had erupted when he had first stumbled in the apocalypse, the quiet crackling the only noise to be found aside from the mournful whistle of wind through the toppled carcasses of buildings.

Diego nudges him in the side with an elbow. “What’s wrong with you, man? Did you get hit?”

“N-no-”

They split into threes and load into the taxi. Diego crams him into the seat next to him, while Klaus slides into the passenger seat and tells the driver follow the taxi in front of us. 

The machinery rumbles beneath him, and he digs his fingers into the velvety upholstery. Cold nausea brews in his gut. 

God, what a mess this is.

His chest seizes in a way that’s anything but good. 

“Seconds, not decades, Number Five.” 

He wishes Dad would just shut up, for once in his fucking life-

A bead of sweat drips down his forehead. Just focus. He just needs to stay awake, and try to figure out a way out of this. 

“Five - Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?”

Diego’s hands flutter awkwardly by his shoulder. He sags against the door, his head rattling against the cool glass. 

“Is it…” His voice drops. “Did you overdo your jumps?”

The driver looks nervously over his shoulder. “Hey, is that kid okay? Do you guys need a hospital?”

“Oh.” Klaus waves a hand. “He just tired himself out. Thought he could pull an all nighter, you know how kids are. Do you have kids? You seem like a family man.”

“Of course it is.” He snaps, and tries to catch his breath. He digs his fingers into his knees. 

Diego mutters something unsavory under his breath. The driver makes an inquiring sound.

“Diego, be nice to your little brother, would you?” Klaus laughs. “Kids, you know?”

Five is going to kill the next person who calls him little. 

Diego nudges him. “Hey, don’t pass out. That bitch might still be on our tail.” He glowers up at the passing skyscrapers, blurring across the cityscape. “Still have to watch out for the crows.”

“Wouldn’t attack civilians.” He mumbles. A full body shiver wracks him.

How is he going to fix this? 

There’s - too much to consider. He was hasty. He didn’t think through what consequences getting scattered in the 1963 would have. He just needs to collect his thoughts. This is just another obstacle the universe has decided to throw in his path. This is nothing compared to the apocalypse. He’s been through much, much worse. He’ll do what he always does: survive. Just scrape through it. There’s no other choice.

If Dad had adopted different children this time around, did that mean they existed in this timeline? Or, no. They had to have been born with the rest of them, so where had they ended up? 

His insides writhe. He bites his cheek until he tastes blood.

The car turns sharply, and his chest aches. He curls forward and coughs like he’s trying to expel something inside. In the apocalypse, getting sick was a death sentence. He’d learned his lesson the first time he’d ventured into the shell of a grocery store and gambled with his life. 

A warm hand closes around his arm. That can’t be right, because everyone in the apocalypse is good and dead. Diego’s face frowns at him in some approximation of concern, but he already buried him. 

“Are you sure he’s alright?” The driver asks. 

“Oh yeah, yeah. He’s fine.” Klaus glances at them. “But it looks like they’re coming to a stop, so… thanks for your help!”

He tosses a wad of cash his way and kicks open the door. Before he can think to protest, Diego picks him up and drags him out of the backseat, stranding them on the sidewalk while the taxis speed away. Overhead, the overcast sky glares down somberly. He watches for the dark blots of feathers sticking out against rooftops.

“-is he okay?”

“Let’s just get inside already.”

Diego drops him back on the ground. He latches onto his arm like an anchor as they enter the motel. “Crows can’t fly in the rain, can they?” He grumbles.

They crowd in the lobby, and the receptionist takes one look at them, taps her nails on the table, and says: “There’s only one room. Going price for rooms is three hundred a week.”

Allison smiles, fake, bubbly and cheerful. “I heard a rumor that you let us stay in the empty room.”

The woman’s eyes glaze over, and she robotically hands Allison the shiny aluminum key. 

This is exactly the kind of place Dad would have abhorred. The carpet is bumpy and uneven, rolling strangely beneath his heels as he sways. The colors clash unpleasantly, and their room, when they get to it, has a dubious stain on the carpet. Thick floral curtains frame the windows, letting in a sliver of pale light onto the ground. The picture frame mounted on the wall depicts an abstract, brightly colored painting that hurts to look at for too long. 

Klaus pokes at it. “The good news is I’m pretty sure that’s not blood.”

Diego slams the door shut and starts a perimeter check, pulling the curtains closed, checking the window locks, the bathroom.

Allison rolls her eyes. “What, did you think one of those Sparrow guys were gonna be waiting to ambush us?”

Diego huffs. “It’s called being vigilant.”

“Okay.” Luther says, in his Number One voice. “What are we going to do now? And what’s wrong with Five?”

“Nothing is wrong.” He says from between grit teeth. 

“Well,” Klaus drawls. “That might be more believable if you weren’t about to fall over.”

Nausea churns in his stomach. He wipes the hand that isn’t wrapped around the arm of the chair on his pants. “Fuck off.”

He collapses back into the chair, and when his vision spins, forces his head between his knees.

“-a hospital?”

“That’s not going to help, Vanya. I don’t even think a hospital could do anything when what’s wrong is clearly-” Diego waves a hand. “Something related to his powers.”

“I’m fine.” He snaps. “I just… need to rest. I’m fine.”

Vanya’s expression shutters, and she hunches her shoulders forward under the crushing weight of her guilt. “Sorry.”

Diego pinches the bridge of his nose. “Don’t apologize.”

“So what now?” Luther intervenes. “Five, do you know what’s… why Dad said…”

Diego snarls. “Don’t talk about that bastard.”

Klaus laughs, humorless, and falls back against the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “You guys - you saw he replaced one of us with a cube, right? Diego, how do you feel about not-Ben being Number Two now? Maybe you can duke it out.”

“Not helping.” Allison cards her fingers through her hair, and massages her temples. 

“It was probably me.” Vanya mumbles, at the same time.

“I dunno.” Klaus replies, trying to deflect from the shock of seeing a stranger in their brother’s body. “Daddy dearest looked like he detested all of us pretty thoroughly.”

“Glad to know he’s still a piece of shit.” Diego spits. Luther frowns, but doesn’t contest it. “He just - told his new kids to hunt us down like we’re some de-defects.”

Technically speaking, the father who spoke to them wasn’t theirs at all, in the same way that Ben wasn’t their brother. He doesn’t know anything about them. He has no right to make presumptions about them, and they shouldn’t take to heart anything that he says. The one connecting thread, of course, continues to be his inability to empathize, and his blatant dismissals of their efforts to survive. 

That is all he has ever done.

Silence sweeps over the room.

Five is going to throw up.

He would normally jump to the bathroom, but he’s shaking so hard he can barely stand, let alone attempt a jump that could probably kill him. Instead, he’s forced to stumble to his feet with a hand clamped over his mouth.

“Five-?”

He barely makes it to the waste bin.

There’s nothing in his stomach to throw up but bile and mucus, neither of which is good, but better than blood. 

Vanya mumbles something to the rest of them, and steps forward to rest a hand on his back.

“That’s a symptom of… exhaustion, right? With your powers?”

Talking is too much effort, and isn’t that a thought. 

Diego paces like a caged animal, the set of his teeth drawn. “We can’t stay here for long. One of them’s got birds everywhere, staying in the city is stupid.”

Allison lays down next to Klaus, spinning her ring around her finger. “And where do you suggest we go?”

“I don’t know - I don’t care. Anywhere that isn’t here.”

He needs to think. He just needs to think. It’s moments like this where he wishes he still had someone to bounce ideas off of. He doesn’t even have anything to write with, and even if he did, his hand isn’t steady enough to make anything legible. 

Paper had been a rare commodity in the apocalypse. Sometimes, you managed to scrounge up a leatherback journal tucked away in someone’s basement, or surviving notepads in the long, empty aisles of gutted supermarkets. Otherwise, you grabbed what you could from the wreckage - a pen there, a sharpie here - and wrote wherever you could, on barely-standing walls, on scraps of paper, napkins, clothing. 

He rouses himself, blinking blearily up at the popcorn ceiling. He’s not in the apocalypse. 

Klaus glances at him while Diego and Allison argue where it would be best to go, a tired eyebrow raised. Five chooses not to acknowledge him.

“Hey!” He claps. “How about one of us goes to get food? Do you think they have room service here? And while you do _that,_ I’ll just be in the bathroom over here-” He makes a beeline for the bathroom, shutting the door soundly behind him before Allison has the chance to argue.

“Maybe we should get food.” Luther suggests. “Five looks… like he’s about to pass out.”

The reflexive _shut up, Luther,_ stays at the tip of his tongue. He doesn’t have the energy to say it.

“Allison has to ask.” Diego grunts. “Klaus threw all the money on him at that cab driver.”

Yes, all fourteen dollars of it.

“Okay.” Allison sighs hard through her nose. “Okay, I’ll do that. Try not to tear each other apart while I’m gone.”

She slips out the door, and Five drifts.

Five wakes up to the sharp scrape of blades sharpening. His limbs are arranged haphazardly on the chair, knees cramping, but he’d become accustomed to joint pain. Almost nothing this soft was still around in the apocalypse. Occasionally, he’d find a blanket that had miraculously survived, or a thin mattress with the springs wearing through the cushioning. That makes it all the stranger.

He cracks his eyes open, and the sight of the motel trickles in, bathed in gray early light. The window cascades with the soft _plink_ of falling rain - which the crows shouldn’t be able to find them in - which is a welcome sight. After the clouds of toxin and ash had blotted out the sky, it rarely rained, and when it did, it was sparse and insubstantial.

Diego stares at him from the corner of the bed, where Allison and Vanya are curled up. Luther must’ve gotten kicked off to the floor, which he didn’t seem to be having any problems with, with Klaus sprawled out on the other.

On the armchair next to him is a plate.

“What time is it?”

“Four.” Diego replies.

Five straightens, ignoring the tremble of exhaustion in his bones. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You looked like you needed the rest. I was gonna wake everyone up soon anyways.” He tips his head towards the window. “The rain’s letting up, those crows could come back anytime.”

“Did you figure out where we’re going?”

They wouldn’t have to if Five could just figure out what to do, but he doesn’t know how to fix this. Yet. He’ll figure it out, if he could just get his thoughts to slow down for five seconds. 

Just like that, there’s a tap at the window. Diego straightens.

A dark shape rests on the windowsill, flicking water from its wings to tilt its head curiously at them. And then there’s another, and another.

“Shit.” Diego hisses. “Everybody up! Time to go!”

He kicks at Klaus’s sleeping figure. “We got company, guys! C’mon!”

Allison is up first, kicking off the sheets wildly, dragging Vanya up with her. Luther startles, Klaus blinks awake, and Diego grabs his arm and hauls him up as more and more crows crowd the window, starting to cry. 

So much for keeping a low profile.

The glass cracks. Diego curses and jumps for the door.

Klaus grabs him by the shoulders and steers him out into the hallway just as the glass shatters, spilling onto the carpet in a waterfall of debris. Allison shrieks, and Diego hurls a knife that ends up buried in a crow’s gut with a sickening _thud._

He can hear the thunderous beat of wings outside as the birds pour through the window, talons extended, ready to rip them to shreds. They flood the room and the hallway even as Klaus shoves him forward. The other inhabitants stumble out of their rooms, trying to figure out what’s going on, only for the torrent of birds to stampede towards them, like a typhoon of black feathers, towering storm clouds of ink.

Talons catch his shoulder. Thread spills from the rip like blood.

A beak tears past his shoulder. Klaus yelps as talons cut open his cheek. 

Outside is no better. The place is surrounded, which means they have minutes at best before the rest of the Sparrow idiots know where they are. 

The sparse amount of people on the sidewalk flee, screaming, from the onslaught. The crows dive at them, beaks and claws flashing. A shriek echoes next to his ear.

He pulls desperately at his power. The blue wavers around his trembling hands, and a burning agony strikes deep in his chest. 

“Hey, what are you doing?” Klaus tightens his grip around his shoulders, bent over him to prevent the crows from reaching him, voice shrill. The relief that follows, having been snapped out of it, is almost worse than the pain itself. He shudders, leaning back into Klaus’ side with a shaky breath locked behind his teeth. 

A soundwave rips across the ground, knocking the both of them off their feet. Five hits the ground first, grabbing Klaus by the cuff of his shirt and dragging him down with him, as the wave of energy surges over them. The sound resonates in his teeth, rattling his skull. 

The crows go tumbling away, pinned to the ground, disappearing like ash in the breeze. 

Vanya. 

Allison and Luther run over to help them up, quickly followed by Vanya and Diego. The glaze of light surrounding her pupil glows, still pale, her hair windswept. “Sorry - sorry, are you okay?”

“Fine.” Five breathes. “We have to go.”

Klaus wraps an arm around his shoulder, stabilizing him. Five tries not to glower, and fails. “Yeppo, that’s right, Fivey. Maybe next time let’s not try the teleportation thing until you can walk in a straight line, mmkay?”

Allison spares him a strange look, but neither of them have time to linger on it. They start down the sidewalk. “There should be a car rental somewhere around here.”

She pulls feathers from her hair and smoothes down her appearance. Klaus has feathers caught in his collar, a cut scratched across his face, while the rest of them are varying degrees of dishevelled. Diego wipes at the weeping cut on his forehead with a sleeve. 

The nausea in his gut squirms, burning hot at the base of his throat.

“It’s up there.” Allison points, and then starts running. She and Luther slip inside, the doorbell chiming pleasantly, completely undisturbed by the earlier burst of power. 

Five stumbles over the curb, up to the neat plot of grass sprawled next to the building, and props his hand on a skinny tree surrounded by slushy snow to brace himself. 

Klaus pats his back as he throws up everything in his stomach - still just bile that burns all the way up is throat. He spits out the taste of blood, licking at the copper on the back of his teeth.

“Well,” Klaus laughs nervously. “It’s a good thing you didn’t eat last night, then.”

He turns none so discreetly to Vanya. “That’s not normal, right? I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure thirteen year olds aren’t supposed to do that.”

“No.” Diego hisses. “They’re not. It has something to do with his powers - overusing them. I’ve never seen him this bad before, though.”

Yeah. Five thinks, teeth grit, cold sweat sliding down his temple. Maybe if I hadn't rewound time. 

He’s coming off of two weeks of minimal rest, various wounds, and a general, compounding exhaustion, his stunt in the barn was just the last straw.

“Do we have water, or anything?” Vanya asks. 

The doors open again, and Allison strides forward with a key dangling from her hand. 

“I got a car.” She says, eyes flicking over their shoulders into the street. “We need to go. We can figure out where a little later.”

She rounds to the back where the car is parked.

Five takes a deep breath, and tags after her.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is Anxiety_Pickle if you want to talk. Thanks for reading!


End file.
